from Bethpage two months later.”
“When was the next one missing?”
“Eight months later. Peabody, Massachusetts. Body discovered six weeks later.”
“How long had he been dead when he was discovered?” Becker asked.
“Less than forty-eight hours. Again it was in a garbage bag, alongside a highway.”
“This one taken from a shopping mall, too?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve checked all the employees to see if any of them worked in more than one of the malls.” It was not a question; Becker knew the answer.
“One employee in common. Peter Steinholz was the manager of a cookie franchise in Upper Saddle River and in Stamford, Connecticut, where the fifth boy was snatched. He’s a family man, wife, two kids.”
“Doesn’t mean anything.”
“No prior arrest record except one DWI three years ago. Reasonable alibi. He checks out pretty clean.”
“Sales reps? Suppliers? Service people? Anybody who might have been at all the malls? The guy who fixes the cookie maker’s ovens, for instance.”
“A few overlaps, six or seven, but the timing is wrong on all of them. You know it wouldn’t be that easy or we would have found him already.”
“I’m just asking out of habit. I know you’ve done all you could or you wouldn’t be here. Tell me about the fourth one.”
“Ricky Stine, Newburgh, New York. Disappeared from a schoolyard during recess. Went out to play with the rest of the kids, never came back. They thought maybe he’d just wandered off, had him listed as a runaway for a couple of weeks until they found his body.”
“Why a runaway?”
“He was hyperactive, always into trouble of some kind. Not a bad kid, just hard to control. His parents said he’d had a history of running away from home, showing up again in a day or two. This time he didn’t show up again.”
“How long was that after the kid from Peabody was found?”
“Ricky went missing six months later.”
Becker nodded. He kept his eyes fixed on the folder as if reading it through the cover.
“Significant?” she asked.
“Not yet. How long till number five?”
Karen looked at her notes. “Four and a half months.”
“He’s getting more frequent. There was an interval of eight months after the first two, then six months, then four and a half.”
“Because he’s getting away with it? More confident?” Becker shot her a glance.
“He’s not thinking about getting away with it, not when he snatches them. Later, when he has to dispose of the body, he might think about details then.”
“What is he thinking about when he snatches them?”
“He’s not thinking at all. He’s feeling.”
“Feeling what?”
“I don’t know yet. I don’t know what he does with them.”
“When I tell you what he does with them, will you know what he’s feeling?”
Becker heard the trace of contempt that Karen could not hide and looked up from the folder. He leaned back in his chair.
“It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”
“Sorry.”
“You don’t approve, but you’ll use it.”
“I didn’t mean anything, John. I know you don’t like it.”
“I don’t know anything everybody else doesn’t know. The only difference between you and me is that you censor it out. You don’t allow yourself to think it, or feel it, and so you tell yourself it’s alien to you. My particular curse is that I can’t censor it out. I know what those bastards are feeling because I can’t keep it out. You can. Inside, you’re just the same as I am.”
Karen shook her head adamantly.
“You don’t accept that about yourself? That you have the capacity to understand even the worst of the bastards if you’d allow yourself?”
“You wanted me to believe this before. I don’t.”
“You won’t.”
“No, John. I don’t. I do not know what they’re feeling when they do the things they do. I don’t mean anything against you, but I just don’t have the capacity.”
“You don’t want it.”
“You’re right. I don’t want to get into their minds. I don’t want to get into their hearts. I just want to catch them and put them behind bars. That’s all.”
“I’m not suggesting you would ever act on those feelings, Karen. I accept that those who do are different. But having the feelings in the first place…”
“When you see the photos, you’ll know what I mean. I could never empathize with this monster in any way…”
“Empathize is not the same as sympathize. I’m not suggesting you feel sorry for him.”
“I hate him,” she said. She pushed the folder toward him. “Look at them. Look at the pictures and tell me I have anything in common with this beast. Look at them.” She spilled the photos on the table, spread them out with a push without looking at them herself.
Becker winced. The photos were taken in the morgue. He recognized the particular light and clarity, the coldly impersonal attention to detail. It was not as bad as seeing the bodies in person, but it was bad enough.
Becker knew he would have to study the pictures later, but alone, when he could allow himself to feel the complex mix of revulsion and sickened fascination without a witness. The photos were obscene, but he had seen worse. And so had Karen. At this moment the strength of her reaction concerned him as much as the cause of it.
Becker shuffled the photos together and put them back in the folder.
“What were they beaten with?” he asked.
She looked neither at him nor the table.
“A variety of instruments, apparently. Some of them wooden, they left splinters. Some metallic. They found paint chips under the skin. Some were caused by unknown objects.”
“Lumber or wood?”
“What?”
“Were the splinters from processed, finished lumber, or was he using birch switches off of trees.”
“Birch switches? When was the last time anyone used a birch switch for anything? What the hell does a birch look like? Do you think this is some sort of bucolic, romantic operation? The wood was processed, lacquered, chemically preserved, rot-retarded, commercial pine. Birch switches? You’ve been in the mountains a little too long. How can you look at those pictures and ask me if someone beat those kids with a switch?”
Becker sat quietly, waiting for her anger to pass.
“I’m out of practice.” he said at last.
Karen breathed deeply and placed her hands in her lap. She forced herself to keep them folded and to keep her attention focused there.
“Sorry,” she said softly.
“Tell me about number five.”
“Stamford. Connecticut. A mall, a very big one called the Town Center.”
“Where the cookie man-Steinholz? — worked.”
“Correct. Larry Shapiro, shopping for a birthday present for his mother with his teenage sister who met some friends, got talking, told Larry to amuse himself for a minute. She thought he had gone to the toy store… They found his body on the divider of the Merritt Parkway six weeks later.”
